You Don’t Have To Imagine Black Women On The Sistine Chapel, This Woman Painted It

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The Creation Of Adam is one of the most recognizable religious paintings (it’s in the Sistine Chapel) and recreated throughout history (even inspiring other works, including . However, 33-year-old Chicago artist, Harmonia Rosales created a stunning piece, re-visualizing Michaelangelo’s work with Black women.

Source: John Parrot/Stocktrek Images / Getty

The artist told Buzzfeed News, “I wanted to take a significant painting, a widely recognized painting that subconsciously or consciously conditions us to see white male figures as powerful and authoritative and flip the script, establish a counter narrative.”

In museums, paintings, and art history, many of the figures portrayed are white, or more particularly, white males and Harmonia feels, “White figures are a staple in classic art featured in major museums. They are the ‘masters’ of the masterpieces. Why should that continue?”

Her process is quite organic, “I have an idea, it might not be fully thought out, but first the idea. Then I let it marinate. Often I’ll place a blank canvas by my bed so that I may wake up and sleep to it. And while I sleep, it speaks to me.” Harmonia also admits to painting women darker than her, because she wants “no one to mistake who I’m representing. I paint what I know, who I identify with.”